by Dave Eggers
They talked about life in the United States. About how to get a job, how to save money, how to arrive on time for work. They talked about apartments, about buying food and paying rent. They helped us with the math—most of us, they said, would be making $5 or $6 an hour. This seemed like a great deal of money. Then they told us about buying food, and paying rent on an apartment. They had us do the calculations, and we realized we could not afford to live on $5 or $6 an hour. No particular solution was offered, I don’t think, but we were too high to dwell on the details. We tried to listen to all the words, but we were so excited. Trying to learn numbers and facts that first day was like catching bats leaving a hollow. They managed to seize our attention when the American brought out a cooler and passed around a large cube of ice. I had seen ice before, though in smaller form; none of the other boys had seen ice at all, and they laughed, and squealed, and passed it hand to hand as if it might change them forever if they held it too long.
At work that day, I attempted to impart everything I knew to George, who would have to take over the project entirely. He was very attentive, but we both knew that leaving so quickly would be problematic. The operation had lost its two primary staff members in the space of a month.
—Maybe they’ll send another Japanese person, George said.
—I hope they don’t, I said.
I wanted no more people coming to Kakuma unless they had no other choice. I wanted us to take care of ourselves, and to solve all this on our own, and to bring no innocents into the hole we had dug. It seemed a sensible plan, that day at least, and after we locked up the office that afternoon, I felt the satisfaction of having settled another of my affairs at the camp.
As I walked home, the afternoon still bathed in harsh light, I saw my stepsister Adeng walking quickly toward me. Her arms were wrapped around her torso, a strange expression on her face.
—Come quickly, she said.
She took my hand in hers. She had never held my hand before.
—Why? What is it? I asked.
—There is a car, she said.—Outside our house. For you.
A car had only once before stopped at our shelter, when Abuk had arrived.
We walked quickly toward home.
—See? she said.
When we arrived, I saw four cars, UN cars, black and clean, dust everywhere around them. I stood with Adeng. The car doors opened and a dozen people stepped out at once. There were two white people, two Kenyans. The rest were Japanese, and all were wearing formal clothing—jackets and ties, clean white shirts. A young Japanese man, tall and wearing a tan suit, stepped forward and introduced himself as the translator. And then I knew.
—These are the parents of Noriyaki Takamura, the man said, sweeping his arm toward a middle-aged couple.—This is Noriyaki’s sister. They have come from Japan to meet you.
My legs almost gave way. This was such a difficult world.
His parents greeted me, holding my hand between theirs. They looked very much like Noriyaki. His sister took my hand. She looked like Noriyaki’s twin.
—They say they are sorry, the translator said,—but Wakana, Noriyaki’s fiancée, is not well. She wanted to meet you, but she is finding all this very difficult. She is in bed, in the UN compound. She sends her good wishes for you.
Noriyaki’s father spoke to me and the man in the tan suit translated.
—They say that they are sorry for the pain in your life. They have heard much about you and they know you have suffered.
—Please tell them that this is not their fault, I said.
The translator related this to the Japanese. They spoke to me again.
—They say they are sorry to add to the tragedy of your life. Noriyaki’s mother was crying now, and soon I was, too.
—I am so sorry that you have lost Noriyaki, I said.—He was my good friend. He was loved by everyone in this camp. I beg you not to cry for me.
Now everyone was crying. Noriyaki’s father was sitting on the ground, his head in his hands. The man in the tan suit had stopped translating. Noriyaki’s mother and father cried and I cried there, in front of my shelter, in the heat and light of Kakuma camp.
I had two more days before I left for Nairobi, then Amsterdam, then Atlanta. I slept without peace that night and woke early, hours before the second day of orientation class. In the inky blue light before dawn I walked around the camp and felt sure I would never see any of it again. I had never seen Sudan again, had never seen Ethiopia again after we fled. In my life up to that point, everything moved in a single direction. Always I fled.
There were too many things to do in those last forty-eight hours. I knew I would do few of them well. The orientation class ended at two o’clock and with the remaining daylight I had to cancel my ration card, pack and then see hundreds of people who I would never see again.
I knew I would give away most of my things, for when someone is leaving the camp, that person is descended upon; he becomes very popular. Custom requires that he leave all of his possessions to those remaining in the camp. First, though, there is the practice of booking, wherein anyone close to a departing refugee will claim whatever they would like to have upon the person’s departure.
Within a day of knowing I would be leaving, everything I owned was booked. My mattress was booked by Deng Luol. My bed was booked by Mabior Abuk. My bike was booked by Cornelius, the boy from the neighborhood. My watch was booked by Achiek Ngeth, an elderly friend who had commented many times on how much he liked it. I used some of the money I had saved to buy new clothes, some pants with side pockets, lightweight and stylish.
I rushed from place to place on my bicycle, that night and the next morning, and when people saw me, they could not believe that I was leaving.
—Are you really leaving? they asked.
—I hope so! I said. I really had no idea if any of this was real.
It was Saturday and I would be gone the next afternoon. I was still not so sure I would be leaving, because the false starts had been many and all of them cruel. And besides, when I spent time thinking on it, I had no business going to the United States; none of it made sense. It was logical, much more so, that the whole affair would be called off. As I raced through the camp, shaking hands with people I knew, it began to seem more possible that I would leave—likely even. With every person who knew about my leaving and wished me well, I began to believe. So many people could not be deceived.
When I arrived home, to sleep one last night at Kakuma, I ate a very sad and joyful dinner with Gop and the family I had adopted. Ayen and her daughters cried because I was leaving. These adopted sisters of mine, every one of them as worthy as I was, cried also because they themselves had no chance of leaving, unless they were married off to prosperous men in Sudan. They were not considered by the UN for resettlement because they were a family, and thus were in no danger. None of the resettlement countries wanted families, it seemed, so Gop and his wife and daughters are still at Kakuma today.
After dinner, I packed the few belongings I would be taking: the new pants I had bought, and the many documents I had kept—my grade reports, proof of completion of a course in refereeing, my CPR certification, my drama-group membership card—twelve papers in all. I found two perfectly sized pieces of cardboard, and I taped them inside, to make sure the documents would not be damaged during any portion of my trip. Then the strangest thing happened: Maria came into my room. I had planned to say goodbye to her tomorrow but she was here now.
I don’t know how she was able to leave her home in the evening. I don’t know what she said to Gop and his wife that they allowed her into my shelter. But now she stood tentatively in the doorway, her arms roped together over her chest.
—I don’t think you should go.
I told her that I was sorry to leave her, that I would miss her, too.
—It’s not that I’ll miss you. I mean, I will, Sleeper. But I think there’s something God is doing. He took Noriyaki and I think he has a plan for you. I hav
e a premonition.
I held her hand and thanked her for worrying about me.
—I sound crazy, I know, she said. She shook her head then, as if tossing aside her concerns, the way she dismissed any hopes and ideas of her own. But then her face hardened again and she looked into my eyes with a new fierceness.
—Don’t go tomorrow, she said.
—I’ll see you in the morning, I said.—I’ll come visit and if you think I shouldn’t leave, we’ll consider a new plan then.
She agreed, though she only half-believed me. She slipped away from my shelter that night and I did not see her again. I didn’t tell her that I shared the same worries, that my own fears were far more immediate and vivid than hers. I told no one, but I was fairly certain that something would go wrong with this trip. But I could not live in that camp anymore. I had been at Kakuma for almost ten years and would not live out my life there. Any risk, I felt, was acceptable.
The lobby of the Century Club is stone quiet after eight a.m. The members are working out beyond the glass, stepping and running and lifting, and I watch them and think of adjustments I might make to my own regimen. Two months ago I began to work out sometimes after my shifts. The manager, a petite and muscular woman named Tracy, told me that I could get a 50 percent discount on a partial membership, and I have been using that opportunity. I’ve gained four pounds in those two months, and have, I think, increased the size of my chest and biceps. I don’t ever again want to look in the mirror and see the insect that I was.
A new woman enters the club, someone I have never seen. She is white, very large, exceedingly graceful. She looks startled to see me.
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘Haven’t seen you before. What a wonderful smile you have.’
I try to frown, to seem hardhearted.
‘I’m Sidra,’ she says, and extends her hand. ‘I’m new. I’ve only been here twice before. I’m, you know, making some changes.’ She looks down at her girth shyly, and I immediately feel that I should say something. I want to make her feel better. I want her to feel blessed. I want her to know that she has been blessed. To be here now, to be alive as she is, to have lived always in this country, Sidra, you are blessed.
She gives me her card and I swipe it. Her picture appears, her smile sad and tilted, and she enters the gym.
Sidra, on that last morning I woke at four a.m. to make sure I could avoid any line at the water tap. When I arrived, there was no line, and I saw this as a good omen. I brought water home and took a shower. As I was stepping out of the shower enclosure, Deng Luol, who had booked my bed, was standing at the doorway.
—It’s not even dawn, I said.
—I’ve never had a mattress, he said.—I have a wife, and she would dearly appreciate one. With this, I will be her hero.
He wished me a safe trip and left with the mattress on his head.
I dressed in my crisp new clothes and packed my things in a plastic bag. I had only my toiletries, one change of clothes, and my documents. There was nothing else.
Everyone in my house began waking up, and all were crying.
—Make the Sudanese proud, Gop said.
—I will, I said. At that moment, I believed I could.
I said goodbye to each of my Kakuma sisters, and to Ayen, who had been my mother for many years at the camp. It was a swift parting; it was too confusing to stay any longer. I left so quickly that I forgot one of my new shirts, and left my new shoes. I realized this later, but did not want to go back.
When I walked outside, I found Cornelius, the neighbor boy who had booked my bike. It was a good bike, a Chinese-made ten-speed, and Cornelius was already sitting on its clean vinyl seat, with the kickstand down, practicing riding it, pushing the pedals forward and back.
—Ready? Cornelius said.
—Okay, let’s go.
There would be unblemished blue skies all day. I was willing to walk to the compound—I would catch the bus to the airfield there—but Cornelius, with his new bicycle, insisted on chauffeuring me. So I sat on the small seat over the back tire, my bag on my lap.
It took him some time before he steered the bike competently with me aboard.
—Pedal, boy, pedal! I said.
Soon he was steady and we got onto the main road to the compound. When we joined the road, we saw the other people. Hundreds. Thousands. It seemed half of Kakuma was walking on that road, to see off the forty-six boys leaving that day. For each person leaving, there were hundreds of friends walking with them. You could not tell who was going and who were the friends. It was a great procession, the women all so sad, the colors of their dresses blooming all over the cracked orange road to the airfield.
Cornelius was now taking us with great speed through the crowd. He rang the bell on my handlebars, parting the throng before us.
—Look out! he yelled.—Move aside, move aside!
Those leaving were sorry for those staying and those staying were sorry to be staying. But I could not stop smiling. My headache cleared momentarily during that bike ride and when we passed through the camp, riding on the back of my own bike, people stepped out of the way of the bike and yelled to me.
—Who is that leaving? they said.
—It’s me, I said.—Valentine! It’s me!
Cornelius rode faster and faster. The thousands of those I knew at Kakuma were now a blur painted in every color. They stepped out of their homes and ran after me, wishing me well in all my names.
—Who is that leaving? It can’t be! they said.—Is it you? Is it Achak?
—Yes! I yelled, laughing.—I’m leaving! Achak is leaving! And they waved and laughed.
—Good luck to you! We’ll miss you Achak!
—Goodbye to you, Dominic!
—Don’t come back to this dirty place, Valentine!
And I looked at their faces as I passed, sitting over the rear tire of my bouncing ten-speed, and hoped that those people would leave the camp, though I knew that few would. The sun was strong when we reached the compound. Cornelius slowed and I leapt off. He had already turned the bike around and was heading home when he remembered to say goodbye. He shook my hand and was off. A boy so young with a bike like that? It was unprecedented at that camp.
I passed through the gate. Inside the compound, the other leaving boys leaving had gathered and were sitting in the yawning shade of the biggest tree in Kakuma. The flight was to depart at two p.m., but we who were leaving on that plane were already gone, already thinking, planning; mentally, we had already left Kakuma, left Kenya, left Africa. We were thinking of the kind of work we would do in the United States. We thought of school there, many of us imagining that we would, within weeks, be studying at American universities. One of the boys had a catalog for a college, and we passed it around, admiring the beautiful campus, the students of many ethnicities walking under the canopies of trees, past the buildings of raw-cut stone.
—I thought Jeremiah Dut was coming, one of the boys said.
—He wasn’t approved. They found out he’d been a soldier.
The boys talked about that for some time, quietly, and we compared the lies we had told. Many of the boys had said their parents were dead, when only some of the boys were sure either way. After an hour of sitting in the shade, a plane came over the hills, looking very small and very fragile.
—That’s the plane? someone said.
—No, I said.
At that moment, as it circled closer and finally landed, I was very sure that this was the plane that would take me to my death.
We stepped onto the plane, piloted by a Frenchman no larger than a teenage girl. There were forty-six of us on the flight, all of us having walked more or less the route I had walked. I knew none of them well; all of my friends were long gone. As soon as the plane’s engines started, one boy vomited on my shoes. The boy ahead of me, smelling the vomit, expelled his breakfast on the seat in front of me. When the plane lurched forward, three more boys vomited, two of them finding the air-sickness bags in time. B
eyond the retching, no one made a sound. Those of who could see out the windows were flabbergasted.
—Look at that building! A bridge?
—No, that’s a house!
And inside the plane it was so bright. We had to lower the shades to rest our eyes.
The plane landed late on Sunday. No one had been to Kinyatta International Airport before, and all were astounded. The size of it all. It was much larger than the airfield at Kakuma, larger than any settlement we had ever seen; it seemed to have no end.
As evening came, we waited at the airport for a bus to take us into Nairobi, to Goal, a refugee processing center run by the International Organization of Migration. We would wait there until the next day, for our flight to Amsterdam and beyond.
In the dark around the airport it was impossible for young men like us to know what we were seeing. What were the lights? Were they disembodied lights or attached to structures? At night, most of Kakuma is dark, for there is little electricity. But here at Kinyatta everyone was still awake. No one slept at all.
—And the cars!
In all of Kakuma there were only a few at one time.
—Man, this is big! one of the men said.
Everyone laughed because it was what we were all thinking. As we drove from the airport into Nairobi, the awe grew. None but I had been in a city.
—These buildings! one of the boys said.—I don’t want to walk under them.
None of the others had seen buildings over three stories, and they had little faith that those throwing shadows over the roads would stand.
At Goal we checked in, were given our itineraries and a buffet dinner of beans, maize, and marague, a mix of corn and beans and cabbage. We were shown to our rooms, six boys in each, sleeping on three sets of bunks.